


Goodbye, Fred

by verucasalt123



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Broken Bones, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, caretaker!sam, casefic, field medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam cares for Dean's injuries after a hunt. For the hoodietime prompt: <i>Well, that looks broken</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye, Fred

The farmhouse outside Diamond, Missouri had been deserted a long time and was in pretty awful shape, but some realtor had listed it for sale. A few people even came by to take a look, until the stories started spreading. Old mirrors crashing to the floor, kitchen utensils flying through the air, books being thrown across the front room. 

Once Dean and Sam got wind of the stories, they figured they’d check it out. Vengeful spirit, maybe a poltergeist. Nothing too complicated. A day of research; Sam flipping across old newspaper articles on a microfiche machine until his vision blurred and his head ached, Dean talking to some of the older folks around town about the history of the house. 

Turned out one of the last residents of the quaint little farmhouse on the outskirts of town had disappeared under suspicious circumstances sixty or so years ago. Fred Norris was an abusive husband, though little was ever done about it other than the local police telling him to quit losing his temper like that. After not hearing from him for a few days, the man’s brother asked a cop to go check on him. His wife Elaine, still sporting a split lip and one half-swollen-shut eye, said she figured he’d just taken off, maybe he was on a bender. The night before he went missing, she’d made his favorite dinner, ham with black-eyed peas. He’d fallen asleep on the couch and when she woke up in the morning, he was just gone. Her sister just happened to be in town visiting at the time and backed up her story. After a search of the house turned up no sign of foul play, the cops just asked Elaine to get in touch if he showed back up. A week later, Elaine and her sister were gone, never to return to Diamond again.

Therein lay the problem, though. No one had ever found Fred. Didn’t seem like anyone had ever even looked for him, really. No body, no salt and burn. They were going to have to go into the house and see if they could identify a cursed object that could be keeping Fred’s spirit around to mess with people after all these years. Dean parked the Impala about thirty feet away from the porch, going in through the front door while Sam went around back to find another way in. Luckily, it didn’t take long for them to find what they figured must be the cursed object – a medium-sized kettle on the kitchen counter with a metal ladle lying against the inside of it. Not so luckily, Sam had already narrowly escaped being crushed by a falling wooden cabinet, and he’d twisted his ankle on his way to the floor. Dean was already in the kitchen by then, shouting and shooting off rounds of rock salt. Sam heard another shot, a crash, then a sickening thud, followed by his brother’s voice shouting for him in a strangled-sounding cry. Limping into the kitchen, he took in the scene. The kettle was in fifty pieces on the floor, right next to Dean, who was clutching his left arm tightly to his chest and breathing heavily. 

“I got the bastard, Sammy, but goddamn if he didn’t get me first. Wooden cutting board there, hit me on the arm right after I got the shot off. Motherfucker. You all right? You’re limping.”

“Twisted my ankle, that’s all. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.” Sam reached down to give his brother a hand up, but Dean refused to move his right hand from where it was cradling his left wrist close to his body. His eyes were glassy and there was a fine sheen of sweat all over his face. “Is it bad? Your arm?”

“Yeah, I think – uh, I think it’s bad, yeah.” And okay, if Dean was outright admitting it was bad, then it must be pretty fucking bad. 

Sam hauled him up by the shoulders, limped him out to the Impala and deposited him into the passenger seat. Once Sam got in on the other side, he flicked his flashlight back on and said, “Let me see.”

Dean looked up at the roof of the car and slowly, very very slowly, extended his left arm, hissing in pain with just the slight movement and not looking at the damage.

And damaged it was. Dean’s left wrist was swollen to twice its normal size, already turning purple, and the bones were definitely not in the places where they belonged. Sam chanced a light touch and Dean let out a scream that would have had old Fred Norris turning in his grave, if he’d had a grave. Well, that looks broken, Sam thought.

“Fuck, fuck, sorry, man, sorry. Can you move your fingers at all?” Sam could see Dean make the effort and the tears that sprung to his eyes when he did. “All right, that’s enough, stop. Stop, it’s all right.” So, definitely broken.

Gratefully, Dean clutched his wrecked wrist back against his chest, holding on to it and still taking slow, deep breaths, clearly trying to calm himself down and keep himself from bawling like a baby in front of his brother.

Now, Sam was twenty two years old and had no formal medical training, but obviously, due to their lifestyle, he knew a distal radius fracture when he saw one, and he suspected the ulna might also be broken. 

“Gonna be fine, Dean, I think there’s a little medical center in Joplin, just a couple miles from our motel, it’s only half an hour or so from here. Get you some x-rays, some good pain meds, it’s all gonna be fine.”

“Our last fake insurance ran out a week ago, Sam”, Dean responded, his voice sounding weaker with each word. “No hospital.”

“Mother **fuck**. Dean, come on, we have to do something.”

“Back to the motel. Not like you haven’t… done this… before.” It was clearly getting harder for Dean to form coherent sentences. The pain must be unbearable. But he was right. As much as Sam had no business knowing how to diagnose this injury, he had no business knowing how to perform a closed reduction on a fractured bone but he’d done it at least six times before he had graduated from high school, and suffered through it twice himself. He knew he wasn’t going to change his brother’s mind, so back to the motel it was, Dean demanding they stop at a liquor store on the way. 

Sam wasn’t all that optimistic, but it turned out there was a liquor store in Joplin, and it was still open. “You want Jack or Beam?” he asked, and got another idea how much pain his brother must be in when the answer was “Tequila. Don’t care what kind.” He left Dean in the car while he went in for a bottle of Patron courtesy of whoever’s name was on the credit card he happened to be carrying at the time.

Once they were safely back at the motel, Dean collapsed onto the bed closest to the door, still sweating, cursing and choking on held-back tears. “Gimme the bottle, Sam.”

Sam dutifully handed over the tequila to his brother and watched as he took a swig, coughed, sputtered, then took another, longer drink. Dean was attempting to steady his breath as Sam went back out to the car for necessary equipment. There was, thankfully, still a splint in the trunk from the last time he’d badly sprained his wrist. It was intended for the right arm, but they’d have to make do. Digging through the med kit, he found a roll of gauze, some medical tape, and an unlabeled bottle of what he thought looked like Vicodin or Percocet. Either one would do, at least for now. 

Re-entering their room, he found Dean sitting up on the edge of the bed, left arm still held against his torso, right arm occupied with the bottle of booze. 

“All right”, Sam started, hesitatingly. It had been a long damn time since he’d done this, but he hadn’t forgotten how. “I have to touch you again, see if it’s just the one bone that’s broken or if it’s both. It’s gonna hurt.”

“I know it’s gonna hurt, Sammy, fuck, I know, just…” Dean held out his left arm, squeezing his eyes shut and taking another drink. As gently and carefully as he could, he felt along Dean’s swollen wrist and was relieved to see that only the radius was broken, the scaphoid and ulna seemed intact. No matter how gentle he was trying to be, though, at his point, Dean could no longer hold back the tears. He just kept repeating, “fuck, fuck, fuck” over and over while tears fell down his cheeks. 

And no matter how much pain Sam’s careful examination had caused, it was nothing compared to the next step. “Okay Dean, take another drink and swallow two of these”, he said, handing him some of the pills from the unlabeled bottle in the med kit. Dean did as he was asked, now sweating profusely and breathing more heavily as he tried to prepare himself for what was next. Because they both knew what was next. Sam was going to move those pieces of bone back together. They both hoped the tequila might have already worked its way to maybe taking some of the edge off, but there was no getting around the fact that someone with no formal medical training performing a closed reduction on a fracture in a dingy motel room without even the benefit of an x-ray was a horrifically painful process. 

“Now lie back on the bed. You wanna bite down on something?”

“No…wait, yes. Yes, yeah, I do.” Sam quickly pulled his belt free from his jeans and folded it in half, placing it in Dean’s mouth, and Dean bit down, hard. For just a minute, he closed his eyes, then opened them again, and nodded in Sam’s direction. 

Pulling in a deep breath, Sam took hold of Dean’s bruised and swollen wrist and as quickly but gently as possible, guided the two pieces of the bone back into alignment. And thank goodness Dean had said yes to biting down on something, because without it, his scream would have had management banging on their door inside thirty seconds. Trying to block out his brother’s agony, Sam moved efficiently, splinting Dean’s wrist and tightening the splint with gauze and tape. 

“Okay Dean, okay, that’s it. I’m done.”

Dean sat up, let the belt fall from his mouth and attempted to get himself under control. “Stop, Dean. Come on. It’s me. Not like I never had a fracture set in a motel room before. It’s all right.”

And thank God (not that Dean would be thanking God for anything), Dean actually listened to his baby brother, letting his head rest on Sam’s shoulder and choking on hitched breaths and half-sobs for a couple of minutes. 

“Give me back the tequila?” he asked, looking up at Sam with tears and sweat soaking his forehead and cheeks. Sam readily obliged, then took a long pull on the bottle himself. Hopefully they’d find a way to get an actual doctor to look at the fracture in the next few days, but either way, Dean was out of commission for a month, at least. They had the splint to keep his wrist still and in alignment, and at least a week’s worth of mystery narcotic, so that was something. 

Half an hour later, Dean was still shaking a bit and keeping his arm held tightly to his body, but the booze/drugs combo had started to work its magic. Sam got a cold washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned up Dean’s face and neck, then helped him out of his jeans and boots, placing the covers on top of him as his eyes started to flutter. 

“Thanks, Doctor Sammy”, he almost giggled, as he faded away into unconsciousness. “You’re better than a hospital. Hospitals don’t give you Patron. Or tuck you in. I like it when give me Patron. Almost as much as I like it when you tuck me in.”

Dean would never remember saying that, and Sam would never bring it up. He didn’t want Dean injuring his good hand punching him in the face.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a nod to the Dixie Chicks song I was listening to when I started writing this. Also, having written it 8 months prior to breaking my arm in a fall, I now have a much better understanding of how miraculously these guys seem to bounce back on the show :)


End file.
